Women Movement In Indiadocx

WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN INDIA B R SIWAL Deputy Director NIPCCD, NEW DELHI One prominent gender concern was status— that is, the rewards and benefits that accrued to women on India’s journey to self-determination, statehood, democracy, progress, modernity, and development. In 1974 the Indian government published a report, “Towards Equality”, that put status of women forcefully on the national agenda by arguing that the position of Indian women had declined, not improved, since 1911 (Committee on the Status of Women, 1974). As a result development and progress became gender issues. Data on gender discrimination in employment, education, land distribution, inheritance, nutrition, and health became impossible to overlook. The recognition of gender as an issue powered the post-colonial women’s movement, supported by feminist critiques and women’s studies in academia. Women mobilized to protest violence, legal discrimination, and rising prices and agitated for better living conditions through higher wages, the prohibition of liquor, and the provision of drinking water. These women represented a wide range of castes, classes, and communities, rural and urban. For colonial rulers, the atrocities practiced against Indian women became a confirmation of the rulers’ modernity and the moral ground on which their “civilizing” mission could be launched. As outsiders they could claim the role of protector of Indian women, interceding on their behalf against brutal patriarchal practices And there were spectacular barbarities in the everyday customs of India, including sati (burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands), female infanticide (especially common in northwest and western India), enforcement of celibate and ascetic widowhood, and prepubertal marriages (especially in northern India). Colonial officialdom and missionary rhetoric singled out such practices to characterize the status of Indian women as especially low and Indian men as exceptionally violent. The social reform movement Women were in the forefront of all the main items on the agenda of the social reform movement. For reformers, women’s emancipation was a prerequisite to national regeneration and an index of national achievement in the connected discourse of civilization, progress, modernity, and nationalism. One strand in the movement concentrated on legislative remedy. A series of campaigns resulted in the abolition of sati in 1829 and the enabling of widow remarriage in 1856. Between the 1820s and 1850s reformers, who favored both legislative interventions by the colonial state and a wider program of female emancipation, set up organizations like the Brahmo Samaj in eastern India, the Prarthana Samaj in western India, the Arya Samaj in northern India, and the Theosophical Society in southern India.

In 1883 Kadambini Basu and Chandramukhi Basu received B.A.s from Calcutta University, becoming the first female graduates of the British empire. Kadambini went on to train in medicine and practiced as a doctor in Calcutta in the 1880s. Other women became doctors, teachers, and educators. Women’s education also proceeded apace in urban centers like Bombay, Poona, and Madras. Remarkable women like Pandita Ramabai, Anandibai Joshi, Tarabai Shinde, Haimavati Sen and Saraladevi, some privileged and some not, challenged patriarchal constraints, at least in their own lives, and some went on to participate in the emerging nationalist movement . Pre-independence The marriage system was the key to men’s control over women. The interests of the colonial state and (male) nationalist sentiment converged in the desire for a more draconian marriage regime. The promotion of marriage as the upper castes and middle classes understood it and the defining of the husband and father as the undisputed head of the family were important colonial and nationalist enterprises. It prompted efforts to reconstrue a ‘Hindu’ and a ‘Muslim’ law, assumed to be fully formed and ‘out there’, which would rigidify gender hierarchies and elevate the authority of the paterfamilias to an unassailable position. The process was twofold, involving a move toward a more rigid definition of marriage loaded in favor of male control and a universalization of upper-caste (or class) norms that sought to eliminate regional, caste, and class variations in marriage practices. Women organisation Saraladevi Chaudhurani, perhaps the most remarkable of the “New Women”, was both a feminist and a nationalist, an active participant in both the social reform and nationalist movements. She was one of the first women to see the need for and start an association for women. She argued that women’s issues could not be addressed adequately as an adjunct of the National Social Conference (set up by the Indian National Congress in 1887) or by men who “advertise themselves as champions of the weaker sex, equal opportunities for women, female education and female emancipation… their pet subjects of oratory at the annual show” but who actually lived in the “shade of Manu,” unwilling to allow women independent action). Saraladevi founded the Bharat Stree Mahamandal (Great Group of Indian Women) inAllahabad in 1910. Saraladevi’s efforts came on the heels of several women’s clubs, groups, and associations initiated by men. These included the Bharat Ashram (Indian Hermitage) in Bengal, formed by KeshabChunder Sen (of Brahmo Samaj) in the 1870s; Arya Mahila Samaj (The Aryan Women’s Association) in Bombay, formed by Pandita Ramabai and Justice Ranade in the 1880s; Bharat Mahila Parishad(Ladies’ Social Conference), formed as part of the National Social Conference in 1905; and Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e- Islam (The Muslim Women’s Association) in Punjab, formed by Amir-un-Nisa of theMian family. These associations, initiated or inspired by men, were critical training grounds for women, allowing them access to education and their first experience with public work. But they also tried to impose traditional gender roles and values. Their limits became evident

when women attempted to define the “woman’s question” in their own ways. As a result women followed in Saraladevi’s footsteps to organize women-only associations (mostly called Mahila Samitis) in the early decades of the 20th century. These local associations laid the ground for national associations of women. During the early spurt of nationalist agitation the Women’s Indian Association was launched (1917), followed by the National Council of Indian Women (1925) and the All-India Women’s Conference (1927). The Women’s Indian Association defined itself as including and representing women of all races, cultures, and religions. It opened branches in different parts of southern India but remained connected to the Madras Theosophical Society. Its political debut was immediate. In 1917 a delegation met Secretary of State Sir Edward Montagu to argue for female franchise. But the Women’s Indian Association remained highly limited in class and caste composition and failed to spread outside the Madras presidency. The National Council of Indian Women was even more elitist. It was set up as a national branch of the International Council of Women and was influenced by Lady Tata and other women from wealthy industrialist families of Bombay. Many of these women saw charity as the council’s main purpose, providing a scope for “enlightened” activity based on the model offered by British middle-class women. Still, the council had committees on labor, legislation, and the press. The legislation committee, under the guidance of Mithan Tata Lam, was the most active. Both the Women’s Indian Association and the National Council of Indian Women claimed to represent all Indian women, but they were far removed from the masses of women whom they confidently sought to benefit. They targeted the government for solutions and advice on what they considered problems. They concentrated on “petition politics” because such activity best suited their stations and purposes. Their contacts, through family, marriage, and social interaction, gave them far more credibility than was warranted by their numbers or experience . The All-India Women’s Conference, the third of these organizations, was much more successful in offering a national representation of women and in its alliance with the Indian National Congress. Within 10 years the conference included subcommittees on labor, rural reconstruction, industry, textbooks, opium, and child marriage legislation. It was through the campaign for the Hindu Child Marriage Bill (1927; introduced by Harbilas Sarda and known as the Sarda Bill) that the All-India Women’s Conference (and other national women’s organizations) came of age. Those autonomous women's groups still involved in struggles are those affiliated to left parties. They are no longer fighting just local or national enemies, but the international economic order. Autonomous and left party-affiliated women's groups have their roots in a strong independence movement and left tradition. Many women were involved in the Indian independence struggle, mobilised by the Communist Party, the Congress Party and the Gandhian movement. However, in the '70s there was great disillusionment with the Congress government and the Communist Party, which was in government in two states. A movement of agricultural tenants started in Naxalbari, and as this spread to the rest of the country there was a rebellion among young people on campuses. From

this Naxalite movement, the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) was formed. This movement gave rise to a number of revolutionary ideas and movements, in particular autonomous women's movements, and it sharply redefined the old left's reformist agenda. Among the many women's groups to spring up was the Progressive Organisation of Women. POW drew strong parallels between caste, class and gender oppression and highlighted the economic dependence of women on men. POW comprised women from many backgrounds, including left parties, civil liberties organisations, student groups and trade unions. Groups such as POW have played a major role in fighting sexism and such anti-women religious practices and customs as dowry and sati. They have also campaigned against violence against women, been active in environmental struggles and led anti-price rise movements. However, the lack of a strong connection between these groups and the socialist movement often meant that they ebbed after achieving only some partial reforms. The traditional left parties, the CPI and the CPI-M, have always had large affiliated women's organisations, but they have tended to be undemocratic and not challenged women's subordination. I met a number of women party activists who felt that their party had never seriously challenged sexual inequality, cultivated female leadership or addressed the problems of poor rural women. Women party activists were also responsible for domestic chores both at home and within the party. The first generation of communist women did not question the party's neglect of gender issues. Having taken the radical step of severing ties with their parents, they sought protection from their male comrades and were often financially dependent on the party. It has been difficult for the CPI-ML to break with this tradition, although there is a real desire within the party to fight sexism. The CPI-ML and its women's organisation, AIPWA, are playing a major role in the women's movement. AIPWA believes that women's oppression in the Third World is a product of the global economic system, and made worse by religious fundamentalism and traditional practices. It concludes that to win liberation, women have to change the whole system and create a socialist society that gives them control over their resources, livelihoods, bodies and lives Women in Political Movement From the 1920s the Indian National Congress began to forge linkages with peasant, worker, and women’s organizations to demonstrate mass support. Women’s political participation was socially legitimized, completely altering equations within the women’s movement. Some women were already engaged in a variety of political activity. From 1889 every meeting of the Indian National Congress included some women, a few delegates and many observers. Their participation was often token and symbolic, but the women were educated and politically knowledgeable and were seeking (or being given) new public roles. The Partition of Bengal (1905) and

the Swadeshi movement attracted much larger numbers, including uneducated rural women . Fifty years ago when India became independent, it was widely acknowledged that the battle for freedom had been fought as much by women as by men. One of the methods M K Gandhi chose to undermine the authority of the British was for Indians to defy the law which made it illegal for them to make salt. At the time, salt-making was a monopoly and earned considerable revenues for the British. Gandhi began his campaign by going on a march – the salt march – through many villages, leading finally to the sea, where he and others broke the law by making salt. No woman had been included by Gandhi in his chosen number of marchers. But nationalist women protested, and they forced him to allow them to participate. The first to join was Sarojini Naidu, who went on to become the first woman President of the Indian National Congress in 1925. Her presence was a signal for hundreds of other women to join, and eventually the salt protest was made successful by the many women who not only made salt, but also sat openly in marketplaces selling, and indeed, buying it. Mahatma Gandhi extended the logic of “feminine” modes of protest to the whole of the nationalist movement. It is argued, credibly, that Gandhi “feminized” nationalist politics by emphasizingsatyagraha and passive resistance and creating a special space for women. He drew to the nationalist movement groups and numbers of women as never before. The Bengal women showed the way during the non-cooperation protests of 1921. Basanti Debi, Urmila Debi, and Suniti Debi (members of C.R. Das’s family) joined picketing lines, courted arrest, and precipitated a broadening of the movement. Women’s participation legitimized the Indian National Congress and Gandhian politics. It bolstered claims of Indian unity against foreign rule. It also undermined the “civilizing” mission of the British and the government’s claim to be a protector of women. Police violence toward and sexual abuse of female political activists helped prove the illegitimacy of colonial rule. The movement for women’s rights was furthered as well. The leadership of the Indian National Congress, for instance, became committed to the civil rights program of women’s associations. Middle-class women in particular gained many social benefits. By breaching the public domain, female activists facilitated their daughters’ entry into the world of formal education, professions, employment, and politics. Within the moral framework of the nationalist movement, they were able to redefine gender roles. Female demonstrators and nationalist leaders claimed the participation of all Indian women, but upper- and middle-class Hindus dominated the movement. This limitation was implicit in Gandhi’s political idiom. He invoked India’s sacred legends— all Hindu— to appeal to women. Icons like Sita, Savitri, and Damayanti resonated with Hindu women, even the most poor, low caste, and uneducated, because for them these were living legends. But they excluded Muslim women, who were uncomfortable with such invocations. But Gandhi’s idiom was successful because it drew on traditional gender ideology, which not only appealed to women but also reassured men (Forbes 1996).

Some women who joined the revolutionary movement transgressed stereotypical gender roles, but they were few and exceptional. Their political achievements were valorized, but society did not consider them respectable or representative. Pritilata Waddedar, the most celebrated female martyr of the freedom movement, asked an impassioned question that could not be answered within the dominant gender ideology of nationalism:

The radicalism of revolutionary women was seen again in the 1940s among early communist women (many of whom came from the ranks of earlier terroristrevolutionaries). Many of these women questioned social restrictions on women’s mobility, the values of segregation, and the discriminatory sexual morality imposed on women. From their ranks came bold social statements like intercaste andintercommunal marriages, and some questioned the institution of marriage. Not all women accepted male inscriptions on nationalism, however. Saraladevi, Muthulakshmi Reddy, Amrit Kaur, and others were committed to Gandhi and his non-cooperation and civil disobedience, but they did not abandon the struggle for civil rights. Examples include the Tebhaga movement in North Bengal, the Telengana movement in Andhra Pradesh, and the cotton textile workers’ movements in western India. But the women’s movement— autonomous women’s organizations— was not able to articulate its campaigns on women’s issues with this mass upsurge of women. The left created women’s organizations of its own— like the Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti (Women’s Self-Defense League) in Bengal— that did significant relief work in times of famine, war, and later partition. But these movements did not coalesce into any significant mass mobilization of women on gender issues. Agitation over women’s issues remained limited to urban elite women, while poor women were mobilized for class or nationalist causes. The questioning of gender roles and relations that had characterized early communist groups soon dissipated. In its “mass face” the Communist Party found itself questioned on its patriarchal leanings. The Genesis of Feminism The 1920s and 1930s witnessed the peak of the so-called first feminist movement. This was the period when women began to organize and mobilize on issues of social reform and civil and political rights. It was a phase of remarkable unity, albeit one achieved at the cost of major social and ideological exclusions. The focus of the movement dissipated in the 1940s: the urgency of the nationalist struggle overrode the priorities of the feminist agenda, and the variety and range of activities in which women began to participate shattered their unity. As with many other political forces in India, widening and inclusion inevitably undermined the claim of a few to represent the many. The second feminist movement inherited many of the legacies of these developments. Issues of family law “nationalized” both the first and second feminist movements. But while child marriage legislation unified the women’s movement in the 1930s, the second feminist movement’s unity foundered on marriage law reform in the 1980s. The Uniform Civil Code controversy had begun to expose fault lines in the

women’s movement in the 1940s; in the 1980s these developed into deep and unbridgeable fissures. At first one question seemed to have been laid to rest. The franchise movement and campaigns for civil and political rights seemed to have been won when the constitution of the new nation-state assured fundamental rights of equality and universal adult franchise. Twenty years later, however, women realized how hollow these provisions were and how little representation they had gained in political establishments and higher reaches of power. Political and social disenfranchisement powered the rise of the second feminist movement, but when in the 1990s the government proposed a bill reserving for women seats in legislative bodies, the women’s movement was too fractured to unite in its support. The next section discusses the rise of the second feminist movement and two issues of contention within it: the Uniform Civil Code controversy and the debate over reserving for women seats in legislative bodies. The New Women’s Movement Since the 1920s a few women have been on a quest for a feminist politics outside the political mainstream. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the first wave of a feminist movement, women’s organizations were able to draw both on the benefits of modernity (from colonial rulers and male Indian reformers) and from the idiom of “Indianness” constructed in the nationalist discourse. Female segregation and seclusion offered opportunities to build women’s collectives that rejected male tutelage but accepted traditional patriarchal gender roles. This social feminism allowed a remarkable hegemony of elite women to speak for “all Indian women” from a united platform. The involvement of many of these women in the freedom struggle tied their demand for women’s rights to nationalist movements to produce a uniquely Indian feminist nationalism with that had three important consequences. First, nationalism implicated female activists in a singular cultural Indian identity based on a new patriarchy. Second, the cause of women’s rights was advanced but hitched to a state-led nation-building discourse in independent India. And third, women became vulnerable to the many competing discourses that constituted the nation-state. In the 1940s the growing involvement of women in diverse social and political movements broke down the essentialist construction of “Indian women.” Neither women’s organizations nor nationalists (say, in the Congress) could continue to speak of (or for) “Indian women.” The loss of hegemony hindered women’s organizations’ quest for equality but helped many other women seek new gender identities beyond narrow caste or class constituencies and the limitations of social feminism. The “petition politics” of the 1930s had outlived its efficacy by the 1940s. After independence, female activists were marginalized because they avoided the political arena for behind-the-scenes activities. At the same time, the ideas that replaced social feminism had nothing to offer activist women— none of them even had an agenda against patriarchy. Thus women’s concerns and ideas were not incorporated into the various struggles they joined, either against the Raj or for social and economic justice before and after independence.

The second wave of feminism emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Women’s organizations set up at this time did not make a bid for hegemony. These were autonomous groups, joined not through the structure of formal association but through informal networking, local leaderships, an emerging feminist press, and an intensification of multivoiced exchanges. This panoply of organizations represented women from all classes, castes, communities, and locales defined by, if anything, a common commitment and a language that is more leftist than liberal a situation not very different from that in most European feminist movements. This movement can make no singular claim to represent all Indian women, but it has, collectively, a national profile and presence. The various all-India campaigns launched by women engendered a cultural radicalism in which a broad range of issues and a multiplicity of voices could be articulated. This is an Indian women’s movement with a difference. Thus there is an urgent need to redefine feminist political agency— to allow for the possibility of secular political collectives to which women can belong not by ascription, but by voluntary participation. The turning point came in 1970s, when several events— some within and some outside India— gave a radical turn to the women’s movement. The “new feminism” in developed Western countries led in 1971 to the international year and then decade of women. The focus was on development. In the 1950s the India state had bypassed Gandhi’s vision of an alternative path to progress, opting instead for conventional models of development: industrialization, central planning, expansion of science and technology. It was assumed this model would deliver the same results as elsewhere in the developed world— that is, raising aggregate well-being would deliver benefits to all. One of the first issues to receive countrywide attention from women's groups was violence against women, specifically in the form of rape, and what came to be known in India as 'dowry deaths' – the killing of young married women for the 'dowry' or money/goods they brought with them at marriage. This was also the beginning of a process of learning for women: most protests were directed at the State. Because women were able to mobilise support, the State responded, seemingly positively, by changing the law on rape and dowry, making both more stringent. This seemed, at the time, like a great victory. It was only later that the knowledge began to sink in that mere changes in the law meant little, unless there was a will and a machinery to implement these. And that the root of the problem of discrimination against women lay not only in the law, or with the State, but was much more widespread. In recent years, the euphoria of the 1970s and early 1980s, symbolised by streetlevel protests, campaigns in which groups mobilised at a national level, the sense of a commonality of experience cutting across class, caste, region and religion – all this seems to have gone, replaced by a more considered and complex response to issues. In many parts of India, women are no longer to be seen out on the streets protesting about this or that form of injustice. This apparent lack of a visible movement has led to the accusation that the women's movement is dead or dying. The reality is somewhat different. While the participation of urban, middle class women is undeniable, it is not they who make up the backbone of the movement, or of the

many, different campaigns that are generally seen as comprising the movement. The antialcohol agitation in Andhra Pradesh, and similar campaigns in other parts of India were started and sustained by poor, low-caste, often working-class women. The movement to protect the environment was begun by poor women in a village called Reni in the northern hill regions of India, and only after that did it spread to other parts of the country. Perhaps the most significant development for women in the last few decades has been the introduction of 33% reservation for women in local, village-level elections. In the early days, when this move was introduced, there was considerable skepticism. How will women cope? Are they equipped to be leaders? Will this mean any real change, or will it merely mean that the men will take a backseat and use the women as a front to implement what they want? While all these problems still remain, in a greater or lesser degree, what is also true is that more and more women have shown that once they have power, they are able to use it, to the benefit of society in general and women in particular. But this prediction foundered on the “hard rock” of Indian patriarchy. This outcome became evident when, at the urging of the United Nations, the Indian government appointed a Committee on the Status of Women. The committee’s 1974 report confirmed the worst fears of skeptics. According to the report, since 1911 the condition of Indian women (especially poor women) had worsened in a variety of conventional measures of well-being. Gender disparities had widened in employment, health, education, and political participation. The new generation of middle-class women in the public world who encountered isolation and other disabilities brought a new eye to bear on the “woman’s question.” The first of these was the Shahada movement in the Dhulia district of Maharashtra, initiated by Bhil (tribal) landless laborers. In 1972, with help from activists of the new left, the laborers formedShramik Sangathana, which initiated a vigorous campaign against domestic violence. In the same year Gandhian socialists broke away from the Textile Labour Association to form the Self-Employed Women’s Association under the leadership of Ela Bhatt. In 1973 Mrinal Gore from the Socialist Party joined women from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to form the United Women’s Anti-Price Rise Front, which turned into a mass movement of women seeking consumer protection. A student movement against price rises in Gujarat developed along the same lines to form Nav Nirman (1974), led by middle-class women. A start was made in this period toward the formation of women’s organizations along lines completely different from pre-independence ones. There was no effort to form all-India organizations. New organizations were local and tightly knit, with focused agendas. In 1973-74 Maoist women formed the Progressive Organisation of Women, initiating a self-consciously feminist critique of radical leftist politics along with an overarching analysis of gender oppression. This led to other Maoist women’s organizations in Pune and Bombay, culminating in the first major celebration of March 8 as International Women’s Day in 1975 . This was a phase of self-conscious commitment to feminist politics. The national character of this movement is usually ascribed to the countrywide protests (led by women) on a case of custodial rape (rape perpetrated by agents of the state on women in official custody, such as police lock-up), the Mathura rape case. Also of considerable importance

in the early days were dowry deaths, cases where wives were murdered by their husbands or his relatives for not meeting demands to transfer more cash, goods, or assets from their natal to their conjugal family. In the first case the demand was for the state to take responsibility for crimes committed by its agents and led to a wider movement for the amendment of the rape law. In the second case the agitation focused on legislative and administrative remedies, resulting in a provision in the penal code giving the police wide powers in arresting perpetrators of domestic violence. The government’s prompt response with fairly radical legislation on both counts led some women’s groups to question the efficacy of public campaigns for changes in law— because the more the law changed, the more things remained the same. Without political will or an enhancement in women’s ability to claim and assert legal rights, laws existed only on paper; they were rarely enforced. From the mid- to late 1980s women’s groups concentrated on providing services to individual women to enable them to gain advantages already given in law. This case work was significantly different from the welfare dispensed by earlier women’s groups. The earlier groups sought amelioration; the new groups sought recognition and realization of rights. Conclusion The women's movement in India today is a rich and vibrant movement, which has spread to various parts of the country. It is often said that there is no one single cohesive movement in the country, but a number of fragmented campaigns. Activists see this as one of the strengths of the movement which takes different forms in different parts. While the movement may be scattered all over India, they feel it is nonetheless a strong and plural force. It is important to recognise that for a country of India's magnitude, change in malefemale relations and the kinds of issues the women's movement is focusing on, will not come easy. For every step the movement takes forward, there will be a possible backlash, a possible regression. And it is this that makes for the contradictions, this that makes it possible for there to be women who can aspire to, and attain, the highest political office in the country, and for women to continue to have to confront patriarchy within the home, in the workplace, throughout their lives. Despite the longstanding and vigorous women’s movement, patriarchy remains deeply entrenched in India, influencing the structure of its political and social institutions and determining the opportunities open to women and men. The negotiation and conflict between patriarchy and the women’s movement are central to the constitution of the nation-state. The development of the revolutionary movement in the country marks a great hope for women all over the country. Women too must move forward collectively, united to demand what it theirs by right, to oppose the continuing atrocities and discrimination, to participate in the struggle for a new democratic society. If the women’s movement moves forward hand in hand with the revolutionary movement for new democratic revolution

only then the root causes of women’s oppression can be smashed and concrete steps forward for the emancipation of women taken. Women’s liberation can be achieved as part of the transformation of the entire socio-economic set-up. Women's Movement in India is an attempt at delineating the tremendous responses of women from the different parts of the Indian sub-continent to the growing women's problems. Starting from the mainstream organisations to the most articulate autonomous omen's groups, the volume depicts the various pattern of women's struggle against age-old suppression and discrimination and for equality with men. It covers the development of women's movement from east to west and north to south of the country. . References Agarwal, Bina. 1994a. A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Agnes, Flavia 1992. “Protecting Women Against Violence? Review of a Decade of Legislation, 1980-1989”, Economic and Political Weekly, 27, 17 (April 5), pp. ws19-33. Ansari, Iqbal A. 1991. “Muslim Women’s Rights; Goals Reform”, Economic and Political Weekly, 26, 17, 27 April.

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